Hello!
I would be happy to give you some tips/information on what to expect (and how to get the best grades). Access to HE is one of the best things I did for myself, it got me going and showed me that I could really work hard and have it pay off (I am studying BSc Business and International Relations)
My top tip for the first few weeks of your Access to HE studies would be focus on your Personal Statement. It's the most boring thing you will ever do, but just get it done. Its around 500 words of writing, but requires a lot of thought and self evaluation, do a good job with this and Uni's will be very eager to recruit you (I received all of my uni offers 1-2 weeks after submitting my Personal Statement, whilst the majority of the students in my class did not receive offers until months later).
In regards to essays, there not many and you are given ages to do them, just start them at once. You get ZERO homework on the access course (at least on the one I did), there is no reason not to start and finish quickly. The majority of people in my class dident - and their grades suffered.
Notes, take them. You will need them. Especialy for Economy and Human Resource Management. You do have to take notes for all classes but these two are the major ones. With these two dont mess about, listen to whats going on, take the notes and go home and re-write them. Why? Because on both of these you have a 'hand writen notes are okay exam'. Yeah seriously. I had aprox 50 pages of notes for my Human resource exam, and I nailed it whilst others failed hard (Some people dident know what Implication meant...). Just take notes!
What college are you doing your access course at? I did mine at Sutton Coldfield college.
If your having to re-do maths because u dont have a GCSE in it previously the only advice I can give you is apply yourself. Yes maths is boring but you know what? You need the skills. Especially if your doing business. I'm doing a joint honors degree so my business is only worth half of my degree and yet i'm doing a Quantitative methods course (this includes some maths ive never seen before....) apply yourself now or suffer later (p.s I got 98% on my maths exam and there's still stuff im unsure about).
I have to warn you, my class started out as 22 students. After Christmas we were down to 10, and two of those 10 failed their exams. Do not be one of those.
The offers I received were as follow: Aston Uni - Get merits through out the course. Birmingham Uni - Pass the course. (I just applied to local ones since I own a home and have no interest in moving into student halls)
I got 7 distinctions and 2 merits.
If you have any other questions just throw them at me and i'll answer everything I can (:
Edit: Oh and make sure you learn Harvard referencing! Let me know if you want me to post you some examples to help you get started.